Toy Soldier
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: Surgery is so much easier. Surgery has process, rhythm, predictability. Love has none of those. Post 9x24.


_**I don't know what this is: what I think will happen in season ten? What I want to happen in season ten? In any case, it's dedicated to everyone requesting fics in the Japril tag on Tumblr. Enjoy.**_

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**Toy Soldier**

My mother is so happy I'm getting married – _so_ happy that she starts shrieking before I can even finish the sentence and clapping and laughing and calling my dad in from the yard. She immediately starts making plans, for flying up to Seattle, for choosing my gown (which I'm informed will have a full cathedral veil and be pure white, not off-white, not ivory, because I'm a _proper_ bride), for brunches and lunches and rehearsal dinners, for exactly what she'll say when she meets Matthew for the first time.

He'll love her.

He loves me, doesn't he?

He loves _me_.

I can't tell her I'm not a proper bride, not the way she means it (not the way she raised me to be), so I shriek too, and babble at her for another half an hour about how excited I am. I'm good at that, shutting down my brain and letting my mouth do the work. She warns me about sample sizes and fittings, and I study the banana in my hand guiltily.

A plastics patient, stunning now and soon to be even more stunning, is wheeled by. I see his blue top. I see his blue scrub cap.

I don't see his green eyes, but it's enough.

Suddenly, the bite of banana I've already eaten is threatening to come back up, so I talk faster, promise to steer clear of cookies and fried food, promise to give her love to that lovely _Christian_ paramedic I'll be marrying in a few months. What's the point in a long engagement? I asked for a reason – no, I _demanded_ a reason. He stayed silent, blood-spattered, beautiful. Matthew loves me and wants to marry me, and he thinks my 'Mint to Be' favours are adorable.

I was a soldier.

Now I'm a G.I. Joe, or worse:

A Barbie doll.

Soon, too soon, I don't know how many thousands of dollars' worth of raw silk and organza have been pulled over my head and off my body again. I don't know how many flowers I've held up to colour charts, and I couldn't tell you which smelt the sweetest or which my bridesmaids will have in their bouquets. Meredith, rose pink and glowing from baby Bailey, who fits just right in her arms, says I'm wasting away. She wonders if it's nerves, but she wonders with a significant glance at Cristina. Why did I ever say anything to her? Why did I ever let every person in the hospital know, through my body language, my frequent visits to the on-call room, through the way I touched him, that I wasn't the same person anymore? It hurts to remember that they know, that they remember. It hurts that I'm not _proper_ anymore.

Only God and Justin Timberlake/Jesus know how much it hurts.

In long abandoned fantasies, I imagined he'd be here for this. He'd make fun of my obsession with finding out what colour the guests are wearing so they don't clash with their table settings. He'd go to Joe's with my fiancé and threaten to kill him and make it look like an accident if he ever cheated on me. On our days off from everything, from the hospital, from the wedding, we'd bake bread that wouldn't rise and discuss where we wanted to be in ten years and what techniques we wanted to learn and end up talking shop like all doctors do, like all surgeons do.

But he's not. And if he were here, he wouldn't be my best man.

He'd be…something different.

Jackson doesn't bring a date to my wedding. He's wearing a teal-coloured tie his mother probably bought for him. He hasn't shaved. His lips are chapped, but he's the handsomest man I've ever seen.

"Where's Stephanie?"

He shrugs like he isn't sure (or doesn't care?)

"At the hospital, I guess."

So he is sure (but does he care?)

"Jackson, you –"

"Is it bad luck for me to see you in your dress?" He won't look at me, not in the face, only at the flare of my dress around my feet, at the end of my veil pooling on the floor. I'm Spring Wedding Barbie, not a soldier. I don't punch men who make me out to be less than I am. I don't kiss my best friend because that punch, that power means it makes sense. I don't feel tears fill my eyes on my wedding day because _this_ man is not the groom and still won't give me a reason not to be a bride, even though he's ruined the idea of a field and live butterflies for me forever.

"No," I say, finally, after all these things have occurred to me. Surgery is so much easier. Surgery has process, rhythm, predictability. Love has none of those. "It's only bad luck for Matthew."

"Right."

"Right."

"You deserve to be happy," are his next words of wisdom, and he does raise his head, and it's like an electric shock goes through me, grounding me. I can't move. I can't even blink. "The way you always planned to be happy, with the husband and the kids and a white picket fence and a traditional wedding night. He's the right guy for you. He's everything you ever said you wanted."

I said _I want you_, _Jackson_.

I should have said _I need you_, _Jackson_.

I can't move, but my hands are shaking. My mother insisted on gloves, and they itch, and the crystal beading on them blurs as I tremble. "Then what are you doing here?" I ask. I don't ask nicely. "I have enough well-wishers today, thank you, everyone here agrees that I deserve to be happy. You didn't even bother to shave!" I should punch him too. How dare he turn on _my_ wedding day at anything less than his best?

"I'm not staying."

"Good!"

"I'm not going to stand up and object."

"Thank God!"

"I feel like hell," he tells me. "And all this time I've spent avoiding you has been hell, but I had to avoid you, because I can't be that guy, April. I can't be the guy who gives you a reason to blow off your dream wedding with your dream guy. I'm not him. I'm the guy who says that something that feels this bad can't be good, not speaking to you, not looking at you, checking round corners in case you're there with eating lunch or scrubbing in on something I have to scrub in on too." If he's telling the truth, you wouldn't believe it. He doesn't look like hell. He doesn't look like it's been hell.

He's just Jackson, gentle hands, straight spine, unfairly perfect face that never mattered so much when we were friends and that was all, and that was it.

I love him so much, and only God and Jackson know how much it hurts.

"I…I'm a soldier," I manage.

That nearly wins me a smile. "Still don't know what that means, Apes."

But I know what it means.

I _know_.

It means when the war is won and the world is saved, I can stand down. I'll have done what I was trained to do, maybe what I was born to do – but the war isn't won yet. I was on a crusade to take back Jackson the way they took back Jerusalem, and I got lost somehow. I've been wandering through the desert like Jesus (although thankfully not suffering quite as much as He did, what with Satan and the stones into bread and everything), but I'm a soldier, not a wanderer. I was born to fight this war.

I don't need a reason from him.

_He_ is my reason.

Matthew loves me, and I love him, and he's been waiting for me all his life.

But I didn't wait. I wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to get drunk, and kiss Jackson, and find out about the way the muscles pull across his back, and keep pinging back like a rubber band every time I decided we weren't supposed to be together. That storm was supposed to happen and that bus was supposed to blow up and I was supposed to hit him when he was down because my heart broke the second it seemed like there would be no more Jackson to wish _my_ life away over. And now…

And now he's standing there in his teal-coloured tie, and all I want to do is kiss him.

But the band is striking up outside.

I hope God forgives me for what I'm about to do.

_Fin._


End file.
